What are Declarative Bodies? Experts, Organizations, and Weber’s Theory of Bureaucracy in the Twenty-first Century

• In Event: 586 - Regular Session. Social Theory

Abstract

In liberal democratic states, governments, corporations and other large organizations have created decision-making rules that individuals can use to make collective decisions. Organizational and political sociologists, such as Wendy Espeland and John Evans, have shown that the aim of such technocratic rules is to create the sense that decisions are made in a seemingly fair and legitimate way. This paper documents another trend in how big governments and corporations have accomplished the same goal over the past century. Using the authority of experts, large organizations have empowered small groups of experts trained in knowledge-making fields (e.g., sciences and humanities) to make decisions on behalf of a collective. Building on the work of ethnographers such as Michele Lamont and others, this paper proposes a theory of “declarative bodies,” which are groups of knowledge experts who are temporarily empowered to use their discretion to make decisions on behalf of a collective. Examples of declarative bodies include safety monitoring committees, science advisory boards, and funding review panels. To develop and substantiate the paper’s theory of “declarative bodies,” the paper extends Max Weber’s work on bureaucracy and draws on an original case study of Institutional Review Boards as an exemplar “declarative body.” The paper illustrates the techniques that “declarative bodies” use to make decisions, and how these techniques affect knowledge-production. Attention to declarative bodies opens new approaches and answers to persistent questions about the process of knowledge production.

Author

• Laura Stark, Vanderbilt University